1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disk discriminating method which can discriminate the types of disks loaded in a disk device in which different types of disks such as a CD and a DVD are to be loaded.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a conventional disk device in which plural disks are loaded, a diskchanger using a magazine loading method is known. However, in many conventional diskchangers, plural disks of the same type such as CDs or DVDs are stored.
However, when the above disk device is used as one type of a storage device serving as a peripheral device of a computer, only disks of the same type such as CDs or DVDs can be exchanged to each other to be driven. For this reason, only reading from these disks can be performed, and the applications of the above device can be limited to specific applications.
The present inventor proposes the followings in Japanese Patent Application No. 8-252829. That is, ROM disks and RAM disks are stored in the same magazine (package), and one of the disks is selected at any time to make not only reading of data but also writing of data possible.
However, when ROM disks and RAM disks which are mixed with each other are stored in one magazine (package), if these disks include disks which are ROM or RAM disks but are different in type or recording format, the disk s in the magazine must be picked one by one every loading of the magazine, and the type of the picked disk must be discriminated. A long standby time is required at the start of operation.
When the types of disks in the magazine are to be discriminated, after each disk is drawn from the magazine, the recording format of the disk can also be checked while signals recorded on the disk are actually read. According to this method, the types of disks which can be discriminated are limited to specific types, efficient determination for the types of respective disks which are finely classified is limited.
In addition, in some combination of a RAM disk and ROM disk, the same laser beam can be irradiated on one of these disks without any problem, but adversely affects the other of these disks. From this point of view, at least, it must be recognized in advance whether a target disk be a RAM disk or a ROM disk.